Should your Sell your Home yourself?Written by Sameer S Panjwani
Should you sell your home yourself? Yes and no. Yes, you should leave option of selling on your own open and no, you shouldn’t rule out using services of an agent to help you sell. There are a considerable number of advantages of using an agent to sell your home but their services do come at a price – up to 6% commission on sale price! That’s quite a sum, a precious $6,000 for every $100,000 your home is worth. Agents are not indispensable. With advent of Internet, a fairly sizeable number of owners have been able to successfully sell on their own. Statistics have it that 80% of home buyers begin their search for a home online. So, putting your home details on Internet is one effective medium of advertising your home and reaching out to a large number of buyers.So now, how would you go about doing ‘yes and no’ at same time? Well, agents may not tell you about this but there is a type of listing arrangement you can have with them, known as an ‘Exclusive Agency Listing’. Under terms of this listing, they would be exclusive agents handling marketing of your property and should they or another agent find a buyer for your place, your listing
| | Your Debt ChecklistWritten by Dave Williams
A Debt Checklist is only sensible way to organize and control your finances. Most people aren't actually aware quite how much debt they possess - in fact, a recent survey found that almost 75% of UK adults were up to £5000 out when asked to estimate their non-mortgage debt. They weren't much better when asked to produce a cashflow statement showing how their hard earned cash was being spent each month! A Debt Checklist is a plan you can use to get a grip on your finances, and will allow you to understand in black and white, where savings can be made, and how debt can be tackled most effectively.Obviously, you will have a savings account. If you DON'T, go open one now. Choose a large, reputable bank or loan company so you won't have any problems getting access to your funds when you need them. Secondly, you need to cut back on your credit card spending. Credit card companies do everything they can to encourage you to spend, and even more to try and cajole you into only paying off minimum each month, making credit cards MOST expensive way to borrow money you are ever likely to come across. If you find yourself paying for 'small' items with a credit card, you are asking for trouble. Not only will you be that annoying person in front of grocery queue at Walmart paying by card, but you will also rapidly lose ANY idea of what you have spent, and where. Debit cards are SLIGHTLY better than credit cards for these small purchases, but not much - you will still face a terrible temptation to spend more (up to 50% more than paying by cash, if recent surveys are to be believed!)
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